Shadows Veil the Sun, a Crisis Returns but the Heart Remains Steady

Moonlight sliced through the rusted iron door of the air raid shelter, casting thin silver lines across the ground. Zheng Yufu tightened the leaky wooden boards with straw rope, while Bo Yu's nails dug deep into his palm.

The emerald glow drifting across Tang Yao's neck mirrored the pipe on the exploding cruise ship from three hours ago, like two guns pressed to his temples.

"Old Feng's tracking program was reversed," Brother Qian shivered as he held up the soaked tablet. The screen reflected his pale eyes. "The enemy even knows which alley we're in…"

A spark suddenly erupted from a burning trash can. Feng Hacker's oil-stained fingers hovered over the keyboard.

The electronic tattoo on the old man's neck flickered in sync with Tang Yao's coughing, sending a chill through Bo Yu's throat. It was a detail that made him taste blood—just like the night before, when he saw the mechanical wound on Tang Yao's chest, and she smiled, placing an iced cola against his overheated wolf ears, saying, "The symbiote crystal should have been replaced by now. You smell like roasted pine nuts."

"I'll get some diesel." Zheng Yufu stood, knocking over half a barrel of shells, one of which rolled to Bo Yu's boot. The inside glowed with the same purple fluorescence as Tang Yao's bloodstains.

Bo Yu's pupils contracted into vertical slits.

From twenty meters away, a metallic clang sounded from behind the rocks. He grabbed Tang Yao and dove into the damp corner of the wall. Three silenced bullets lodged into the mildew-covered wall where she had just leaned.

Feng Hacker's laptop exploded in a burst of blue and purple arcs, illuminating the metal shard sliding from Brother Qian's pocket—it was the hexagonal crystal stone that should have been embedded beneath Tang Yao's collarbone.

"Northeast sewage pipe!" As Tang Yao tossed a dagger that pierced the shadow in the vent, Bo Yu smelled the last scent he should have encountered.

The sea breeze carried the scent of Mr. Xu's cigar, now mixed with the fragrance of bamboo leaf wine, which Brother Qian had bought for everyone three days ago. And now, Zheng Yufu, who should have been keeping watch outside the shelter, was pouring diesel onto the rusted fan blades.

The sound of Bo Yu's werewolf bones snapping was drowned by an explosion as he grabbed Tang Yao's wrist amidst the collapsed concrete slabs.

The wisteria pattern on her palm was swallowing the bloodstains, just like the Su embroidery screen in the antique shop two weeks ago, the one that ate moths. "Don't use all your strength," Tang Yao whispered, biting his mutated wolf ear. "The old wound in your lower back is bleeding."

The infrared dots of the pursuers wove into a web between the ribs of the fishing boat they hid in. Bo Yu's eyes locked on the reflective bottles in the cabin, recalling twenty hours earlier—when he suggested they split up, Brother Qian broke off the last piece of chocolate for Tang Yao, while Feng Hacker stuffed emergency medicine into Zheng Yufu's fishing bag.

"The tide will turn in four minutes." Tang Yao suddenly pressed her forehead to his chest. Her lashes brushed against the silver fur that hadn't fully receded from Bo Yu's werewolf form. "Do you remember last month's full moon, when you said you'd take me to see the meteor craters in the desert?"

Bo Yu's claws pierced the boat's hull.

The sound of pursuers' boots could be heard clearly from three hundred meters away at the dock. But what was even more jarring was the memory of Brother Qian's silly grin—seven days ago, this guy drunkenly holding a squid skewer and saying, "The five of us can make a werewolf murder table," when suddenly Feng Hacker paused as he cleaned his glasses.

When the seventh wave of pursuers was blown away by explosives, Bo Yu smelled the familiar scent of Tang Yao's hair mixed with the burnt odor of nanomachines.

She was using the fluorescent blood seeping from her wound to draw a star map at the bottom of the cabin. The patterns resembled the experimental files in Mr. Xu's safe. "Don't trust what you see," she suddenly pressed her cold palm to Bo Yu's rapidly rising chest. "Just like that night when you thought I was going to kiss you, but I was counting the snowflakes on your lashes."

The firelight from the direction of the air raid shelter suddenly turned green, and Bo Yu's wolf eyes caught the strange code reflected from Feng Hacker's glasses.

The old man was pounding on a half-melted keyboard amidst the burning ruins, while Zheng Yufu, who should have been out buying food, now had purple electronic threads tangled in his fishing net, instead of seaweed.

"Your back wound needs stitching," Brother Qian said, appearing from the shadows of the cabin. The medical kit in his hand smelled of expired iodine.

Bo Yu's eyes focused on the fresh scratch on Brother Qian's wristwatch. The indent on the watch bezel matched the bullet casing marks left by the attackers three days ago.

Tang Yao suddenly laughed lightly.

Her bloodstained fingertips traced the blood vessels bulging on Bo Yu's neck, leaving a fleeting ice-blue glow. "Want to play a game? Bet on who finds this place first, them... or..."

The sea breeze suddenly stilled. Bo Yu's wolf ears caught the ticking of Feng Hacker's pocket watch from the twelve o'clock direction.

That was the prize the old man had dug out of the ruins during their raid on the lab two weeks ago.

The ticking rhythm of the watch now gradually synced with the slowing heartbeat of Tang Yao.

The second explosion came from the air raid shelter, and Zheng Yufu's shout mixed with the salty sea breeze as it rushed into the cabin.

The old fisherman held a broken piece of wisteria branch in his hand, the metallic sheen of the flower's petals stinging Bo Yu's wolf eyes. It was clearly a fragment from Tang Yao's necklace.

The third explosion from the air raid shelter sent another wave of salty air rushing in. Feng Hacker's glasses chain tangled around Zheng Yufu's wrist-mounted electronic fishing net.

The old man suddenly grabbed Bo Yu's wrist, now bulging with veins, pressing his oil-stained thumb hard into his mutated wolf claw joint. "Five years ago, on the typhoon night, I fixed the navigation systems of three ships."

Zheng Yufu kicked over the burning oil barrel, the sparks forming a web on the shelter's ceiling.

He pulled out a moldy cigarette pack and stuffed the last soggy cigarette into Bo Yu's bloodstained fingers. "That year, your father at Lighthouse No. 7..." The old man suddenly went silent, tearing off the shell charm around his neck and slapping it into Tang Yao's glowing bloodied palm.

Bo Yu's wolf ears twitched slightly. He could hear the electrical hum in Feng Hacker's implanted cochlear, a frequency matching the encrypted signal intercepted three days ago.

Tang Yao suddenly hooked his belt buckle with her bloodstained pinky, her cold fingertip tracing circles over his old wound. "Do you remember when the cruise ship exploded, and I said I'd teach you to tango?"

"There's a wreck on the southwest reef." Bo Yu suddenly spoke, his werewolf voice shaking the iron barrel. "Mr. Xu's gene sample tank is stuck in the cockpit's safe." As he said this, his gaze fixed on the green reflection from Brother Qian's wristwatch, the faint hue creeping onto Feng Hacker's keyboard interface.

Brother Qian's Adam's apple moved as he swallowed. The bandage he'd been applying suddenly unraveled, revealing the butterfly knot Tang Yao had sewn three days ago. "I... I'll inflate the assault boat." The medical kit he knocked over spilled, and a half-tube of tranquilizers rolled to Tang Yao's feet, the label date matching the day they were ambushed at sea.

Tang Yao lightly laughed, crushing the medicine bottle under her shoe. The glass shards traced a star chart on the ship's deck. "The bet is next month's werewolf ear care rights?" Her pale lips, tinted with fluorescent blood, steadily inserted the hexagonal crystal into Bo Yu's armed belt.

As the red light of the tracker scanned the porthole for the third time, Bo Yu feigned sleep.

The barbs on his claws hooked a strand of Tang Yao's long hair, but in his ears, he could hear Brother Qian sneaking toward the satellite phone.

Feng Hacker suddenly coughed loudly. The old fisherman hummed a tune off-key while Tang Yao, who should have been unconscious, was writing with her nails in Bo Yu's palm—the symbol of a reef on an ancient nautical map.

Four hours later, twelve drones surrounded the supposed wreck coordinates.

Bo Yu surfaced from behind a buoy a hundred meters away, watching Brother Qian hand Tang Yao's jade necklace to a masked man.

He tore through the waves with a wolf's howl, startling the night herons, while Feng Hacker's computer virus simultaneously crippled all the electronic devices in the sea.

"That jade... is it a locator?" Brother Qian kneeled on the oil-soaked deck. The metal band of his wristwatch was melting into liquid silver. "They captured my sister..." He suddenly went mad, ripping open his shirt, and the octopus-shaped tattoo on his chest overlapped perfectly with Mr. Xu's lab emblem.

Tang Yao's fluorescent blood suddenly began boiling in the glass bottle. She leaned against the mast, laughing softly. "Octopuses have three hearts, but..." Before she could finish, Zheng Yufu's fishing net had already ensnared Brother Qian, and the electronic buoy on the net started counting down.

The explosion's shockwave overturned the life raft. Bo Yu, amidst the thick smoke, grabbed Tang Yao's cold wrist.

Her pulse suddenly halted for two seconds. The wisteria pattern on her palm began to consume the ship's iron rust. "Don't touch that!" Feng Hacker's warning came too late. Tang Yao had already vanished into the moonlight like a faded hologram, leaving only a mechanical butterfly wing fluttering in Bo Yu's bloodstained fangs.

The tides rolled over the deck, scattering the flashing electronic debris. Zheng Yufu reached into his waterlogged fishing bag and pulled out a rusted iron box.

Inside the lid, the blood-painted wolf totem glowed. Bo Yu's old scar burned again. It was the same meteor mark he had seen in the desert the night he awakened.

"The game has just begun." Tang Yao's voice suddenly came through Bo Yu's wolf-ear communicator, mixed with electromagnetic interference, "Remember when I said I'd count your lashes?" The signal abruptly cut off. The butterfly wing between his fangs projected a coordinate, its red light pointing to a silhouette swallowed by the fog deep within the harbor.

The sea breeze brought a mix of diesel and decaying organic matter. Bo Yu's wolf eyes contracted into two golden lines in the night.

He tore through the bloodstained bandage around his neck, and found that inside, nano-fluorescent writing showed a countdown—exactly the same latitude and longitude as the day his father disappeared three years ago.